Camino Cesar Chavez - An Editorial

Do you guys think this is fun for me? Sitting around, talking about superheroes like they're the only thing that matter in what must be a meaningless existence of mine? And also talking shit about Wolverine all the time because I mentioned hating him once so now it's part of my blog persona?

I mean honestly he isn't as awful as I make him out to be. He's really just a symbol for a lot of things I do hate, like dark and edgy "heroes," the need to include fan favorites into every plot line whether it works in context or not, and Hugh Jackman, my real enemy.

Javert should have shot your punk ass, 24601.

Well I fucking love it. In real life, I'm a regular nerd who falls in love with crazy people and knows too much about English culture at the turn of the century. But here, I'm an angry nerd with opinions and stuff.

But occasionally, real life becomes slightly important. For example, they're renaming a street in my city after Cesar Chavez. This matters especially to me because my sister is an activist who organized the first Cesar Chavez day in this city, and worked with the people who were instrumental in getting this street renamed, including Cesar Chavez's niece, Mimi Chavez.

"Who is Cesar Chavez?" you ask. Well, he was a Mexican-American, raised by migrant farm workers, who got a law degree but went back to the fields to organize protests that would seriously improve conditions for Latino and Filipino farm workers.

Now, if you know something about Cesar Chavez but not a lot about him, you're thinking "Wait, he helped Filipinos? Was this some sort of indirect side effect?" No, it wasn't. Cesar Chavez was actually instrumental in uniting farm workers of all races so they could form a meaningful union. Unless you had a really liberal history teacher with a boner for civil rights, you probably didn't learn that because it doesn't fit in with the narrative that says people of minorities can only really help people of the same minority.

Why do you think that no one ever talks about Martin Luther King Jr.'s radical pro-labor views? Or about how Harriet Tubman worked as a spy for the Union? I think the reason Barack Obama freaks people out so much is because he's a black guy with views on things other than black rights.

And for all of you guys who were thinking this wasn't going to be a superhero-related post, you're slightly wrong. I've mentioned before about my, ahem, concern that minorities in comic books are handled badly, if they're handled at all. You either get minority characters who are so whitewashed that their ethnicity is only mentioned in a footnote somewhere, or they're a walking stereotype, like a teen growing up in the rough side of El Paso, struggling in school and having a drug-dealing aunt as an enemy.

Also he gets his powers from an evil alien race that illegally immigrates to Earth. Real subtle, DC. 

We have this idea in our heads that Latino is something that has to define someone fully, if it defines someone at all. Superman is the boy scout. Batman is the brooding loner. Lantern Stewart is the Marine. Jaime Reyes, the third Blue Beetle, is the Mexican. And if you're the Mexican, you don't get to be anything else.

Anyway, so they're renaming this street - which is a major street, by the way - Camino Cesar Chavez. Now, this is a pretty long name for a street, but I guess it's a small price to pay in exchange for recognizing that Latino-Americans did things in America once. So I won't complain, because representation happens in small steps that are usually slightly offensive at first. Right, Immigrant Alien Blue Beetle?

Jaime Reyes approves his slightly stereotypical portrayal.

But, with Camino Cesar Chavez, people are still complaining. Specifically, people are complaining because "camino" in Spanish refers to a little street, not a big street. Never mind that the street being renamed is a major street, probably bigger than our MLK Boulevard. The name doesn't connotate the level of grandeur these assholes are looking for.

Like, seriously? I love complaining as much as Batman loves feeling sad on rooftops and Speedy loves shooting up heroin. But some things are actually important - even more important than that rush of joy you get when you tell people that the guy who plays the archetypal badass in the Marvel Universe also portrayed a gay guy in a musical.

I'm the best at what I do, and what I do is look fabulous!

But this is real life. Latinos everywhere are desperate for someone - anyone - to serve as a Latino role model. The closest thing we have to that right now is Tony Stark, the alcoholic who's apparently too embarrassed of our community to ever talk about us, and Cesar Chavez, a historical figure that our society keeps mentioning vaguely, in passing, before getting back to the white folks.

So why, when people are taking the small steps necessary to bring attention to this historical giant, are you trying to bring these small accomplishments down? Now isn't the time for your goddamn negativity. Now is the time to make change.

The Killing Joke - A Review

If I'm being honest, I'm a bit reluctant to review comic books on this website, for a few reasons. Like I've said, tracking down every comic book in a series can be tiring, especially when you're trying to follow the Blue Beetle story line, and the one comic book shop has hole in the middle of the series, and then the other comic book shop doesn't have any of the new 52 comics at all, and all you want to do is figure out how a fucking Latino deals with superpowers.

I mean, do you know how hard it is to find representation as a Latino comic book enthusiast? Yeah, Tony Stark, Kyle Rayner, and Bane are all Latino comic book characters. And what do they all have in common?

Tony Stark. White name. White face. No discussion of Latin American culture.

Kyle Rayner. White name. White face. No discussion of Latin American culture.

Bane. Super interesting background as a Guatemalan who dresses up like a luchador. (Wait, that's different!) Becomes a popular supervillain in The Dark Knight Rises, where he has a white face and no one even mentions his Latin American culture or heritage. (Oh yeah! I knew there was a reason I mentioned him.)

Latino representation in the 2010s.

So yeah, long story short, comic books piss me off sometimes. But when you can actually get your hands on the one you want, they can be pretty amazing. For example, "The Killing Joke" by Alan Moore, published in 1988, was a great way to make people realize that The Joker didn't have to be some hilarious splash of dandyistic color.

So if you really liked the way Heath Ledger portrayed the Joker, you can thank Alan Moore for crafting a story where The Joker is exactly the kind of sociopath who would dress up like a clown and kill schoolbuses full of children for laughs.

In this story (watch out: heavy spoilers, in that I tell you the whole plot in detail and if you try to read the comic book afterwards nothing will surprise you), The Joker escapes out of Arkham Asylum (again? who would have guessed!), shoots Barbara Gorden in the spine, kidnaps Commissioner Gordon, strips him down naked, puts him on some creepy old amusement park ride, and makes him look at pictures of his daughter before, during, and after she became paralyzed from the waist down.

The climax of the story isn't even a fighting scene. It's The Joker's villainous rant to Commissioner Gordon, which is basically the same speech he keeps trying to give in The Dark Knight. You know, the old, "I'm crazy because I had one bad day. Now I'm going to give you a bad day and you're going to become just as crazy as I am."

Meatloaf again? That's it! I'm going to become a serial killer.

Now you guys know my two standards when it comes to entertainment: fun and interesting. And this was definitely fun, in a horrifying kind of way. The scene in the beginning, where The Joker is playing cards with Batman, works as both an eerie "Let's Have Tea with Chthulu" moment, and as a shout-out to The Joker's motif. Then, after he's escaped, The Joker manages to make buying abandoned property exciting.

And honestly, as psychopathic as this may sound, I think the most fun thing in the world was watching as The Joker does every shitty thing he can imagine to Commissioner Gordon. I honestly started rooting for The Joker in that scene. (Is that evil of me?)

"We have to take him to Joker. But first, let's piss on him!"

But what was interesting was the ending. Now, you might remember, at the end of "Batman Begins," Batman lets Ra's al Ghul die, sort of a "good guys don't kill people so I'm just going to leave you on this train that's about to crash instead." At the end of "The Dark Knight," Batman tackles Harvey Dent off a building and kills him, not even looking for a "well it's not really killing" loophole.

And, I think worst of all, at the end of "The Dark Knight Rises," Batman defeats Bane by cutting off his access to his anesthetic, which is about as badass as hiding a diabetic's insulin. Then Catwoman kills him, and Batman's kind of like "Thanks! Now I don't have to break my no killing rule that I only really pay lip-service to anyway."

But here's where the ending to "The Killing Joke" differs. When Batman saves the Commissioner from The Joker, Gordon hasn't turned into a hateful clown who uses The Stranger as his go-to life guide. He hasn't lost his internal moral compass. He hasn't even lost his dedication to the law. He tells Batman that he wants the Joker caught "by the book."

So The Joker kills a bunch of people and gets brought in by the book, but Mike Brown steals a cigarillo and gets shot six times?

Christopher Nolan's Batman disregards the judicial system, the privacy of innocent citizens and the rights of the accused. And he treats his "no killing" rule like something to work around at best and ignore at worst. The criminals Batman faces are dark, Nolan reasons, so Batman must become even darker.

But "The Killing Joke," for all its darkness, puts Batman firmly in the side of light. The victory at the end isn't just about catching the bad guy, but proving to him that, no matter how much evil a good man encounters, no matter how much you torture and humiliate him, no matter how bad you make his day, a good man can and will do the right thing, always.